ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the theoretical underpinnings of various approaches to cognitive load that have been developed within the field of working memory. It explains the basics of the cognitive load approach and several mathematical models of cognitive load. The chapter discusses additional processes (long-term memory) that should be considered when evaluating the accuracy of cognitive load approaches to memory performance. It describes the basic principles of the working-memory approach to cognitive load. The working-memory approach to cognitive load explains how multitasking impacts the number of memory items that can be maintained simultaneously. The time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model of working memory performance was the first modern model to give specific mathematical estimation of memory performance. TBRS also predicts that cognitive load effects will occur due to a cycling of memory items through attention or reduction in attentional resources applied to the memory during secondary task execution. In educational approaches, cognitive load is a measure of difficulty imposed during acquisition of knowledge.
